Part 14

“Conscience is a terrible thing once it is aroused, Stevenson. It is living, vibrant, and it lashes and scourges until it has exacted its toll. That was what it did to me there in the darkness, alone and at its mercy, and with no chance to escape. And in my agony and fear I cursed the God who had created me and saddled me with this thing. I learned my lesson, though, before I was through. I who had presumed to place my own puny will above the Great Eternal Will; I who had dared to believe that the great order of things, the plan by which we all must live and die, must make an exception of me, learned that I was wrong.

“_Martin Ellis is innocent_, Stevenson, and I trust to you to see that justice is done. He did not kill Agnes Keller and I knew it. And I stood by and let him be convicted. More, I took the stand against him and helped to make that conviction certain. I told only the truth in my testimony, but I did not tell all I knew and what I omitted would have saved Ellis. I did not want to testify at all, but the prosecution refused to let me take advantage of the confidential relation which is supposed to exist between physician and patient.

“The state was right in its theory that the man who strangled Agnes Keller did so because he was responsible for her condition and did not wish to marry her. She came to me in my study on the night she met her death and told me she had discovered she was about to become a mother.

“She refused to take any steps I suggested and she said that her child, when it was born, must have the legal right to bear the name of its father. And that very night she was lured into an automobile with the promise that the man who was to blame would take her to a nearby town and make her his wife. But on that lonely country road he turned upon her and killed her with his bare hands.

“And how do I know these things? Because, Stevenson, I was the man responsible for her condition, _and it was I who killed her_!”

_The_ Closing Hand

_A Powerful Short Story_

_by_ Farnsworth Wright

Solitary and forbidding, the house stared specterlike through scraggly trees that seemed to shrink from its touch.

The green moss of decay lay on its dank roofs, and the windows, set in deep cavities, peered blindly at the world as if through eyeless sockets. So forbidding was its aspect that boys, on approaching its cheerless gables, stopped their whistling and passed on the opposite side of the street.

Across the fields, a few huddled cottages gazed through the falling rain, as if wondering what family could be so bold as to take up its abode within the gloomy walls of that old mansion, whose carpetless floors for two years had not felt the tread of human feet.

In an attic room of the house two sisters lay in bed, but not asleep. The younger sister cringed under the dread inspired by the bleak place. The elder laughed at her childish fears, but the younger felt the spell of the old building and was afraid.

“I suppose there is really nothing to frighten me in this dreary old house,” she admitted, without conviction in her voice, “but the very feel of the place is horrible. Mother shouldn’t have left us alone in this gruesome place.”

“Stupid,” her sister scolded, “with all the silverware downstairs, somebody has to be here, for fear of burglars.”

“Oh, don’t talk about burglars!” pleaded the younger girl. “I am afraid. I keep imagining I hear ghostly footsteps.”

Her sister laughed.

“Go to sleep, Goosie,” she said.

“‘Haunted’ houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in imagination.”

“Why has nobody lived here for two years, then? They tell me that for five years every family moved out after being here just a short time. The whole atmosphere of the house is ghastly. And I can’t forget how the older Berkheim girl was found stabbed to death in her bed, and nobody ever knew how it happened. Why, she may have been murdered in this very room!”

“Go to sleep and don’t scare yourself with such silly talk. Mother will be with us tomorrow night, and Dad will be back next day. Now go to sleep.”

The elder sister soon dropped into slumber, but the younger lay open-eyed, staring into the black room and shuddering at every stifled scream of the wind or distant growl of thunder. She began to count, hoping to hypnotize herself into drowsiness, but at every slight noise she started, and lost her count.

Suddenly she turned and shook her sister by the shoulder.

“Edith, somebody is prowling around downstairs!” she whispered. “Listen! Oh, what shall we do?”

The elder sister struck a match and lit the candle. Then she slipped on her dressing-gown, and drew on her slippers.

“You’re not going down there? Edith, tell me you’re not going downstairs! It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don’t--”

Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the bed with blanched face and wide, terrified eyes.

“There is something moving around downstairs, and I’m going to find out what it is,” she said.

Taking the candle, she left the room. Her younger sister lay in the darkness, listening to the pattering of rain on the roof and straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. The noise downstairs ceased, but the wind rose and the rain beat upon the roof in sudden furious blasts that made her heart jump wildly....

Ten minutes passed--twenty minutes--and Edith had not returned.

A door slammed, and the younger sister thought she heard something moving again, but the wind began to sob and drowned out all other noises. Between gusts, she heard the portentous sound, and each time it seemed nearer.

Then--she started as she realized that something was coming up the stairs. Once she thought she heard a cry, to which the wind joined its plaintive voice in a weird duet.

Nearer and nearer the strange noise came. It mounted the stairs, step by step, heard only when the wind and rain softened their voices. It passed the first landing, and moved slowly up the second flight, while the girl fearfully awaited its coming.

The wind howled until the house quaked; it shrilled past the eaves and fled across the fields like a hunted ghost.

And now the girl’s pounding pulses drowned out the screaming of the wind, for the presence had _invaded her bedroom_!

She cowered under the covers, a cold perspiration chilling her body until her teeth chattered. Her imagination conjured up frightful things--a disembodied spirit come to destroy her--a corpse from the grave, gibbering in terror because it could not tear the cerements from its face--the murdered Berkheim girl, with the knife still sheathed in her heart--or some escaped beast, licking its lips in greedy anticipation of the feast her tremulous body would provide. Or was it a murderer, who, having killed her sister, was now bent on completing his bloody work?

A flash of lightning split the sky, and the thunder bellowed its terrifying warning. The girl threw back the bedclothes and shrank to the wall, her eyes starting from their sockets, fearful lest another flash reveal some sight too ghastly to contemplate.

Slowly the being dragged itself across the floor, lifted itself onto the bed, and uttered a choking sound of agony.

The girl sat petrified. Then, timorously, she extended a shaky hand, but quickly withdrew it in dread of some hideous contact.

Again she thrust her trembling hand into the gloom, farther, farther, until it touched something shaggy and wet.

A clammy hand closed over hers, and she started to her feet, with a horrified scream.

The icy hand tightened with a sickening tremor, and dragged her down. Then her tortured senses gave way, and she fell back unconscious upon the bed....

* * * * *

When she awoke, it was day. Beside her, on the bed, lay the bleeding body of her sister, Edith, stabbed in the breast by the burglar she had tried to frighten away.

The younger girl was clutching the clotted wisps of hair that had fallen across the breast of her sister, whose cold hand had closed over hers in the last convulsive shudder of death.

_Howard Ellis Davis Relates Some Extraordinary Adventures With_

_The_ UNKNOWN BEAST

At the edge of the little settlement of Bayou le Tor lapped the slack waters from which the village had been named. A mile to the south, they lost themselves in the Mississippi Sound. Northward, they wound among somber swamps, to disappear at last into the marshes above.

Giant cypress trees crowded down to the very edge of the settlement, as if jealous of the small space of cleared land it occupied beside the bayou, and to one not accustomed to the place it seemed that an evil boding lurked forever within the depths of those overhanging, gloomy swamps.

But until the unknown Beast first made its mysterious presence felt, no harm for the people of Bayou le Tor ever had come out of those swamps, except the deadly malaria, which clutched its victims in shaking agues and burning fevers that consumed life as a woods fire might consume a strip of dried sedge grass.

Before this strange death that had come to haunt the night swamps, they shrank in helpless terror. Cows were driven in from their pastures while the sun was yet high. Mothers called in their sallow-faced children from play as soon as the shadows began to lengthen.

The first victim had been Swan Davis, an old fisherman who lived by himself on the edge of the bayou above the settlement. He had been found in the swamp, dead. At first it was thought that he had been beaten to death, he was so broken about the body.

Finally, however, it was decided he had been crushed by some mysterious, unknown force. Something had caught him and squeezed him until his bones had cracked like dry reeds.

Then the three Buntly boys, driving in a bunch of steers from the marshes, were overtaken by night on the swamp road. The cattle had been going peacefully enough, when suddenly they had become frightened and lumbered off ahead, bellowing madly. Themselves frightened at the queer behavior of the animals, the boys followed, as fast as they could on foot.

That is, two of them did; for when Jard and Peter Buntly emerged from the shadows of the swamp road, they found that their brother, Sims, was not with them.

Terror-stricken though they were, they had returned into the swamp, calling his name. When they saw nothing of him, and he did not answer their calls, they went quickly home and reported what had happened. All night long, bearing flaming torches, the men of the settlement beat up and down the swamp. Toward morning, they found the young man’s body, bruised and broken, but no trace of what had killed him.

When the people of Bayou le Tor gathered to discuss the circumstances surrounding these two mysterious deaths, the negroes, and some others, declared that an evil spirit haunted the gloomy fastness to the north of the settlement, while the more conservative agreed that some creature strange to those parts, some unknown beast, was ranging the night swamps, a creature that killed for the love of killing.

Armed with shotgun and rifle, they hunted him. They set bear-traps, baited with an entire quarter of beef hung above. But no one ventured into the swamps after dark, until, one night, ten of the best men in the settlement formed a party and rode out on horseback through the swamp road.

Armed with pistol and sheath-knife, they rode, two by two, knee to knee, their horses following each other nose to tail, so that if any one of the party were attacked they all could turn and fight in a body.

Nothing happened until they were on their way back; then Walter Brandon--who, because he was one of their bravest, brought up the rear--grew careless and lagged behind. Suddenly, his horse came charging in among the others, riderless.

They could find no trace of Walter, and the other nine could only ride in and break the news to his young wife, who carried a baby at her breast.

The next day, the girl’s father, old Arner Horn, secured the services of a small, battered automobile and crossed two counties to see Ed Hardin and beg that he come and deliver them from this unknown beast that, one by one, was killing the men-folk of Bayou le Tor.

* * * * *

In his own county Ed Hardin was a deputy sheriff, and the reputation of his prowess had traveled far. Each summer, when the fishing was best on the Sound, he came to Bayou le Tor. Each winter, he came to hunt wild turkeys in the swamps that surrounded the settlement. The people had grown to know him well, and they knew that he feared neither man, beast, nor the devil.

He returned in the automobile with Arner, bringing with him his young friend, Alex Rowe. When they reached Bayou le Tor, the news awaited them that Walter’s body, which bore on it the same marks as those others who had been killed, had been found floating on the waters of the bayou, and that it was being held at the water’s edge so that Ed Hardin might see for himself the nature of death which this creature inflicted upon its victims.

After he had seen, Ed Hardin came away alone, grim-mouthed. When he entered Arner’s yard, it already was growing dark, the night breeze rustling in the liveoaks overhead. He went to the barn and saddled Arner’s bay mare. Having led her to the front fence, he tied her there and went into the house.

In the hallway, which divided the house through the middle, he paused as he heard in the room beside him the low sobbing of a woman. Then he passed on to the room that had been assigned to him and Alex Rowe. A small kerosene lamp had been lighted and set upon the dresser, and in the light of this he was buckling on a belt holding a broad hunting-knife and a pistol when Alex burst in upon him.

“Ed Hardin,” cried the young man, “what is that mare doin’ at the front fence? Where be you goin’?”

“I’m goin’ ter hunt that beast, Alex.”

“Yer ain’t goin’ ter do that thing, Ed! Yer don’t know what hit is. How--”

“I’m goin’, Alex.”

“But, Ed, hit’s _night_. Wait till daylight. The last two times folks went out on the swamp road at night they was er man killed.”

Broad-shouldered, sparely-made, the big deputy drew himself up to his full height and turned to gaze for a moment at his young friend.

“I’m goin’ now,” he said calmly.

“But, Ed, you heerd what they said ’bout the schooner up in the bayou. Hit’s been layin’ there fer two weeks, ’thout dealin’s with nobody. You heerd what Rensie Bucker, the ole nigger what uster be er sailor, said. He said he paddled up in his dugout by that schooner an’ them folks on board is India folks. He says that in their lan’ they’s strange beasts an’ reptiles, an’ that mebbe they’ve sot one of ’em loose in the swamp, mebbe put hit ter watch the swamp road.”

“Ef hit’s been sot ter watch the swamp road at night,” said Ed, “that’s jes wher I want ter go. I want ter meet it.”

“Wait, Ed. Wait till I git holt of er hoss. I’m goin’ with yer.”

A soft smile played for a moment about Ed Hardin’s grim mouth.

“No, Alex,” he said: “I reckon I’ll go by myse’f.”

As he was untying the mare, those who had returned to the house gathered about him and, as Alex had done, tried to prevent his going off alone into the swamp at night.

But he swung lightly to the saddle and galloped out through the settlement, into the shadows of the giant cypress trees.

* * * * *

The mare was a spirited and nervous animal, and she leaped and shied as she danced among the stagnant pools that lay black in the swamp road.

In thus going out deliberately to use himself as a bait for the Unknown Beast, Ed felt that he could depend largely upon her agility and quickness to prevent being taken unawares by a sudden rush from the darkness. He drew from its holster his heavy Colt’s revolver and thrust it through his belt in front, within convenient reach.

So dark was the black tunnel of the road that he could see no space in front of him, and he let the reins lie slack on the mare’s neck, so that she might be undisturbed in picking her footing. And as he plunged deeper into the swamp, he experienced a lonely boding that was new to him.

Time and again, he had gone fearlessly out alone in the pursuit and capture of desperate men. Now, however, he did not know what nature of creature it was he sought, and he had to invite an attack from the darkness in order to get in touch with it.

The night was murky, almost sticky in its heaviness, and the swamp seemed strangely silent. Only the occasional call of some night bird pierced the stillness. He was familiar with the road, having traveled it frequently, and the places where violence had occurred had been described to him in detail.

A few hundred yards to the left of the road, where he now was riding, the fisherman had met his death. He passed the place where Brandon last had been seen, and, soon after, entered the deeper recess of the swamp where the herder had been snatched into the darkness of death. Plainly, this neighborhood of violence was the creature’s lurking-place.

Suddenly, the mare shied, snorted, and stood quivering, her head turned as though she saw or smelled something at the side of the road. He raised his pistol, which he now held ready cocked in his hand, and fired quickly into the darkness. As he had only one hand on the reins, it was some moments after the report before he could calm the startled animal sufficiently to proceed on his way.

Twice more, at indications of terror from his horse, guided by her forward-pointed ears, Ed Hardin fired into the black shadows at the side of the road, the discharges making lurid flashes in the darkness.

The Unknown Beast evidently was near, following him through the brush--or over the treetops. If it were on the ground, he hoped for the slender chance of killing or wounding it before it had an opportunity to attack.

After each shot, as well as he could for the plunging of the mare, he listened intently for some cry of pain, some movement of the bushes; but the silence of the shadows was unbroken. The strain was nervewracking, and he had a wild desire to whirl the mare about and speed away in mad flight. He could not urge her out of a slow, hesitating walk, and she frequently shied from one side of the road to the other, with those periodic halts of trembling fear.

Then the road ran from beneath the arches of the swamp and passed over a corduroy crossing, bordered on each side by a dense growth of titi. The mare went more quietly now, and Ed began to hope that some of his shots had taken effect. He breathed more freely, now that the branches no longer drooped overhead.

Presently, however, he found himself beneath spreading liveoaks. These, flanking the road on either side, sent their giant limbs horizontally across. He peered from side to side, his eyes straining to penetrate the gloom, each indistinct tree trunk assuming a sinister outline.

Overhead, the trees towered in cavernous depths, and suddenly, with a swish of leaves and branches, out of them dropped a great, dark object!

* * * * *

The frightened mare leaped forward; but the nameless creature alighted behind the saddle.

Hardin snatched out his pistol, only to find that he was unable to use it. For he had been caught in a giant embrace that pinioned his arms to his sides, an embrace against which his own great strength was powerless.

The mare ran desperately, her supple body close to the ground, her graceful neck outstretched. Out from the swamp she sped, crossing a reach of flat country, once heavily covered with pines. The timber long since had been cut, only the stumps remaining, charred by forest fires--hordes of black ghosts crowding down to the edge of the road on both sides.

It was a wild ride for the man, with death perched there behind. The great arms, wound about him, were slowly squeezing the breath from his body, and beneath that embrace he felt his ribs bend inward to the point of cracking. Desperately, he maintained his grip on the saddle with his knees.

Then, just before consciousness would have left him, he raised his legs and flung himself sideways. The saddle slipped under the mare’s belly. Carried by the momentum, but with that crushing grip never relaxing, the man and the terrible creature which held him hurtled through the air.

They struck with a _thud_ against a shattered stump at the side of the road, while the frightened mare sped on. The murderous creature was next the stump and at the impact its hold on Ed Hardin loosened. Having slipped from the great arms, Ed flung himself over and rolled for several feet to one side.

The pistol long since had dropped from his nerveless fingers; but he now quickly drew his hunting-knife. Expecting an immediate attack with fang and claw, he lay on his back, his feet drawn up, very much in the position a cat assumes when defending itself. He knew it would be useless to pit his strength against that of the enormous creature, and the best he could hope for was to ward off an attack with his feet and watch for an opportunity to reach and drive home the knife.

And suddenly it was looming there above him. For an instant it seemed to hesitate, then it backed slowly away. With a quick, halting motion, walking upright like a man, it began to circle about him. Its long arms swung below its knees. A round head was set on a neck so thick and short that it seemed to spring from the shoulders themselves. As it circled about him, Ed turned also, keeping his feet always presented.

Again the creature backed off, up the road. Then it turned and walked slowly away.

For a moment Ed Hardin lay watching it, unwilling to change his position. Then, tentatively, he raised himself to a sitting position.

Suddenly, as if, without looking, the creature divined his movement, it turned about, at a distance of perhaps fifty feet.

And then, with a strangely human shriek of rage, it rushed toward him.

* * * * *

As it came through the gloom, this maddened creature, with its uncouth, hopping run, swinging its long arms from side to side.

The man dropped back into his former position, feet raised, arm held ready to strike with the knife.

Before it reached him, it dropped forward, without in the least pausing, and, propelled by both arms and legs, shot in a great, froglike leap through the air.

The shock, as it landed upon him, drove Ed Hardin’s knees back against his chest. His right arm, held ready to strike with the knife, was pinned and twisted painfully.

The knife slipped from his hand. A long arm shot forward and talon-like fingers clutched his hair. With his legs doubled back as they were, once more he was seized in that giant embrace, and he felt that his knees were being pressed into his chest until it soon must crush in like a shattered eggshell.

Then consciousness left him.

... When his senses slowly returned, he became aware of lights flashing and horses stamping, and the sound of men’s voices.

Jonas Keil was speaking, and Ed had the rare experience of hearing himself discussed after he was thought to be dead.

“--’Most on my bended knees ter git ’im not ter do it. But he said he wouldn’t feel right ter let Death run loose unhindered, long as he was livin’ an’ with strength ter fight. An’ when he rid out single-handed an’ alone, the bravest man what ever drawed breath was kilt.”

From his position, he judged that he had been placed on the grass at the side of the road. Near him was someone who, from an occasional quivering intake of breath, seemed to have been sobbing.

He tried to turn and see who it was, and he found that he could not so much as twitch a finger.

He heard three new arrivals come up the road, a man on horseback and two runners, the two evidently holding by the rider’s stirrup leathers. The rider, as soon as he drew up, said:

“We come soon’s we heerd you-all was gone ter foller Ed. Arn’s bringin’ the waggin. Hit’ll be here terreckly; we passed hit er piece back. But Arn didn’ git the straights from Cy when he come atter the waggin what hit was kilt Ed. Po’ ole Ed!”

Old Rensie Bucker, the negro who once had been a sailor, speaking with the _patois_ of foreign birth, replied to him:

“Hit ees Jonas, de chile-minded neegar who was shanghaed from his mammy’s shack down on de point ten year back. He had de mind of er chile an’ de strength ob five men, wid his beeg wide shoulders an’ short neck; wid de hump on his back an’ his arms hangin’ mos’ ter his ankles. He was gentle in dem days; but de East Indee folks tuck heem off an’ dey brought heem back er beast. He’s frum de schooner, by his clothes, an’ dey must have sot heem on de swamp road at night ter watch an’ keel.

“Dere he lies, dead. De stump ’gin which he struck when he pull Meester Ed Hardin frum his hoss had er sliver which stuck mos’ through heem. Den when he fit wid Meester Ed de hurt must have killed heem, because there is no other wound.”

The man beside Ed Hardin spoke, and Ed recognized him.